This invention relates in general to water heaters and in particular to portable, large-scale water heating units to provide heated water in volumes suitable for commercial scale processes, such as for example oil production applications.
There is a need for efficiently heating high volumes of water for industrial applications, such as hydraulic fracturing (“fracing”) in the oil and gas industries. Industrial processes, such as fracing, may require water heated to temperatures ranging from 100° F. to 140° F. In fracing, the heated water is injected under high pressure into wells to free up oil and natural gas that is trapped in shale formations. In some regions, such as the Bakken Shale region of North Dakota and Montana, a source of water is not available at or near the drilling site. As a result, large volumes of water must be transported to the site. Currently, the water is heated with inefficient mobile boilers on trucks at the drilling sites, using diesel fuel or propane gas. The heated water is stored in tanks on the site until it is used.
It would be desirable to produce heated water on-demand and in sufficient quantities to support industrial-scale processing activities. Conventional water heaters are normally scaled-up to a size sufficient to supply the hot water demand. These single, large scale units are usually too large to transport in a ready-to-use condition for water heating needs in the field. In addition, these units cannot be re-scaled in the event of a malfunction, and therefore, will cease to produce hot water. Thus, it would be desirable to provide an industrial water heating system that is portable, scalable, and containerized for use particularly in remote sites.